The Colorman (13 page)

A series of shadow boxes along the hallway revealed their collections of what looked like garbage to Mrs. Jenkins. Garbage displayed in cases and press boxes. A decades-old toothbrush with its squared shape and red gummy pick, squeezed-out tubes of various ointments, used makeup compacts, brushes and hair clips. And what must have been matted hair, gathered from a brush or drain. Other displays held beads and earrings, hung carefully against the background with t-pins. Further into the space Mrs. Jenkins could see huge Riker boxes, the press boxes her father-in-law had used to display his butterfly collections, but these were broad and tall as a human being. Wrinkled violently against the glass were women's garments of all sorts, Mrs. Jenkins didn't know, she didn't see, because as soon as her gaze fell upon them in the angled winter light from the high windows, she stopped, gasped out loud, turned and pranced as fast as her aging body would allow her back down the stairs and out of the door. Breathing heavily, Mrs. Jenkins shut the door tightly, testing the handle twice and then, shaking her head with sympathy for poor Mr. Morrow, obviously driven witless by this loss, she went about cleaning the saner first two floors of this lonely and unhappy house.

Rain moved back and forth between her printer and the wall, sheet after sheet emerging with portions of the image she was creating. She taped them into a huge grid on the wall next to one of her blank canvasses, stood back and looked, backed up and considered, then reapproached and repositioned a sheet carefully. The composite brought certain elements of the landscape loudly to the fore and the grid she had created, off-kilter as it was, gave a disorienting, vertiginous feeling.

Her music was blasting, she was sipping a beer from the bottle as she worked, and the waning light of the day was escaping slowly out the windows and through the huge open doors of the cabin.

Rain stepped back up the stairs to the kitchen table where she had left the as-yet untouched box of paints. She ran her hands over the glossy wood again. Finally she set down her bottle, opened the box and pulled out a tube. Stroked it with her thumb. Took out another. Then she put them all back and closed the box.

“You planning to frame it?”

Rain jumped, made a save on her tipping beer bottle and turned to find James Morrow standing at the threshold of her cabin. “What?” she gasped, pressing her hand to her collarbone in a ridiculously old-movie gesture she hadn't even realized was in her.

“I'm sorry,” Morrow said as he stepped back away from the doorway. “I'm sorry to startle you.”

“No, no,” Rain said. “I didn't catch what you said.” She ran over and hit the power button on the stereo. The sudden silence was engulfing. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you SO much for this…this amazing…”

“Well you can't take it with you.”

“I'm sorry?”

“The paints. You have to use them.”

“I thought…” Rain faltered, looking down at the box.

“I mean they're
for
you,” he said. “However, you are going to have to actually squeeze the paint out of them.”

“Oh, I… They're just too beautiful. I can't imagine messing them up. It's like a jewelry box.”

“I suspected as much from your note. That's why I came by. Don't let it be a sarcophagus—you're supposed to
use
it.”

James went into the kitchen and opened the box, sliding a palette she hadn't noticed out from the lid. Then he grabbed out two tubes: a Burnt Umber and the large tube of white.

She watched him helplessly. “It's just too nice.”

He squeezed large dollops from both tubes on the polished wooden palette.

Rain laughed, “No!! Oh, my God!”

Morrow dipped his fingers into the paints, rubbed his hands together and proceeded to grab all of the tubes, bottles and brushes in the box.

Rain turned away while he was doing this. Widening her eyes as though she were witnessing somebody running a combine over a Louis Vuitton trunk.

“It's nothing,” Morrow said casually. “It's meaningless. It's an incomplete thing without you messing it up.”

Rain turned back around as Morrow wiped his hands on the little chamois tucked neatly in its own slot.

“Uh. Thank you?” she said.

Morrow dispensed linseed oil, mineral spirits and turpentine into small metal cups he'd clipped onto the palette, grabbed the palette knife and two or three brushes and plunged them into the paints.

“There,” he said, “use it.”

Between chastened and sarcastic, Rain said, “Sure will. Thank you for that.”

Morrow tossed the chamois on the box and turned to leave rather abruptly. He turned back in the doorway and said, “I want to see that on canvas next time I come by.” With that, he stepped out into the now fully dark evening and disappeared back down the road toward the factory.

Morrow's manner was such a mix of gruff kindness and something else, she thought. Like hopelessness with humor. Dark knowingness. Rain was very comfortable with curmudgeons though, so he didn't scare her. Just interested her. She was unsure why he was being so nice to her. Perhaps he had admired her father.

Suddenly alone again, Rain looked across the living area to the composite she'd taped on the wall and the large canvas leaning there.

With a shake of her head, she turned away and put one of her smal sanded blocks of wood onto the table alongside the palette. Onto this she sketched out a classic, representational landscape. A miniature of the large composite she'd just worked out.

She had never used Highland Morrow paint before, though she had seen it in art supply stores. It was very expensive and Rain had always thought that the prices reflected the cachet rather than the actual paints. She used high-grade oils from Britain and France, occasionally switching a brand, but mostly sticking to a kind of formula of this tube from this mark and this tube from another. She liked the greener Umber made by Sennelier and the browner Raw Sienna from Winsor & Newton. These are among the finest oils available, and certainly not cheap, but Highland Morrow were like the rougher-looking, one-off jewelry pieces on the main floor of Barney's as compared to the finest samples from Tiffany's. They were for people who needed not only to get things no one else could afford, but that no one else even knew about. Or so Rain thought.

As she dealt colors around the palette, she could feel by the weight of the tubes that these paints were invariably dense. They felt like platinum in the hand, like asteroids, heavier than they should be. And as the colors snaked their way out onto the pale neutral face of the palette, they asserted themselves individual y in their diverse personalities. The Ultramarine hummed into deep and rich low mound, the Yellow Ochre sluiced out hard and straight, the Viridian and the Burnt Sienna made juicy, layered mountains.

When Rain started mixing the paints, she saw how they brought out new qualities in each other rather than ever muting or cutting the other. She found herself lost in the mixing, bringing this and that color to fullness with the Titanium White and to another kind of more transparent lightness with the zinc. Many of the paints had a jewel-like transparency along with intense tinting strength. It took very little of any one color to bend the one she was mixing. By the time Rain looked up again, she had mixed all the wild variety of fall-leaf tones; the brights and dims of shadow and gold of that particular fall glow; the heavy blue of the bright, fall sky along with the golds and grays and purples of the Hudson River clouds; and the subtle steel of the train tracks lit by those skies. She had enough that she could have tackled the big canvas, but she just set to work on some small wood blocks she had prepared, painting with great globs of color in a loose and brushy style. She discovered the confidence and pleasure in finding the tone and stroke that would speak what she saw. Nothing at stake, nothing to prove, this “realist” painting, made up from a mix of images she had collected. It felt like the first thing she had ever painted. This luscious feeling of discovery, of bravery—as she took areas past ugly stages into sudden beauty and evocation—was surprising and what it did most of all was make time disappear completely. Rain forgot to eat; she felt no fatigue, and it was only the faint blue growing brighter in the view out the window, and the sound of birds starting to warble, that woke her out of her trance and made her stumble across the proscenium to fall into her bed with the most beautiful kind of exhaustion she had felt since she couldn't remember when.

Rain navigated the Vespa up a steep, hair-pinning, paved road to an early Robber-Baron-era castle on top of a ridge. From her jacket pocket she pulled out and checked again the directions to be sure she was in the right place. There was a glow from inside one of the downstairs rooms, but the building, however impressive, looked mostly abandoned. As she pulled off her helmet and tucked it into the seat compartment of the bike, the heavy, front door flew open and Chassie came loping out toward her holding a martini glass.

“Rain-Rain!” she hooted. “Fashionably on time!”

“Chassie!” Rain said, hugging her warmly. Chassie had on a black-velvet version of the big, washed-denim shirt that was her uniform, along with the usual, black, unstructured pants and clogs. She was so down to earth and normal seeming, that her circumstances must have been inherited generations back. She encouraged enthusiasm and honesty. “This place is incredible!” Rain gushed.

“Isn't it great?” Chassie agreed. “You come right inside, now. You need to meet the chef.”

Chassie led Rain into the enormous foyer. The place was artfully lit and tastefully minimalist in decor. Beyond the structure, however, there was nothing terribly show-offy about the place—simply huge expanses of space and sweeping stairwells. There were a few very good paintings and antiques around, but nothing looked too recently upholstered or painted, and the newer items, though not tasteless, were distinctly down market. A treadmill, rower and an exercise bike sat in one corner of the living room.

Chassie, following Rain's gaze, said, “We don't heat the whole place anymore, so we tend to live in it like a big apartment.” Arriving in the spacious kitchen, Chassie introduced a well-maintained woman in her upper-certain years who appeared to be directing the cooking. “Violetta, this is the Rain Morton-Morton that I was telling you about.”

“Madlin,” Rain said, reaching out to Violetta. “Morton Madlin.”

Violetta wiped her hands on a cloth hanging from her apron. “Very pleased,” she said in a light accent. “What will you have?” she asked, indicating a very well-stocked bar on one side of the kitchen. “Chassie, you get for her,” she commanded in a motherly tone.

“What's pouring?” Rain asked genially.

“Pisco Sours!” Chassie said heading over to the bar. “I'm a drink divvy. I can tell what you'd like, I guarantee it. Have a seat.” Chassie indicated a row of small black barstools at an island in the middle of the kitchen. Violetta directed the help to lay out some appetizers.

Marisol came in from a back door of the kitchen with a martini glass drained of something pink. Her hair was still wet, but her makeup was perfect and she was wearing a vintage Pucci pantsuit with swirls and eddies of color lurching all over it. Little pointy, bright-orange pumps peeked out underneath the flowing cuffs.

Chassie received a big smooch over by the bar. “You look absolutely FAMOUS my dear,” Chassie told her.

“Thank you, love,” Marisol said. “Just came in for a refill, then it's hair.”

“Did I tell you?” Chassie said to Marisol and Violetta, “Rain Rain is a painter.” She topped off the sour with bitters and a dollop of foam from the shaker.

“I…” Rain stopped herself from apologizing and took the drink from Chassie.

“I adore art,” Violetta said, assuming an expression that probably intended great enthusiasm, but looked terribly bored nonetheless. Beautifully flaccid facial muscles failing to engage. “It's so
creative
,” she sighed. “Do you know our mysterious James Morrow then?”

“No, yeah. The tour was great,” Rain said. “He seems really interesting, very…interesting.”

“What do you mean,
interesting
?” Chassie prodded.

“Well, he brought me…uh, gave me some paints…and I… and then…” she stammered.

Marisol raised an eyebrow and threw out her hip. “You mean the man himself?”

“Well, yeah,” Rain said. “Is that unusual?”

“He only comes out for the tours, stays pretty much to himself otherwise…” Chassie replied knowingly. “Small town.”

“He's really sick I think, huh?” Marisol offered.

“Dying, I heard,” Violetta said, leaning in conspiratorially.

“Did you know the wife?” Chassie asked her.

“No, never met her,” Violetta said. “But can you imagine?”

Chassie looked at Rain and explained, “James had a wife who died. Train.”

“Tragedy,” said Violetta. “And that's just the beginning of the story.”

“Never was the same,” said Chassie, shaking her head.

“You, don't know, my dear,” said Violetta, pinching Chassie's cheek. “You were in diapers.”

“And you were in the city,” Chassie said. “Everybody knows the Morrow story, or some version of it, but few know the man…”

“Enough of this morbid sad shit,” said Marisol, taking her freshened cocktail from Chassie. “I gotta dry my hair.”

The doorbell rang. “Oh, that'll be Marco! Darling boy!” Violetta said, removing the apron she was wearing to reveal a quite decent figure in a stylish wrap dress and big beads.

Chassie reentered the kitchen pulling Anne behind her with Alvaro following close behind. “Not yet, Violetta!” she called out cheerfully.

Violetta twinkled a look at Rain, a hard fold that could either have been real exasperation or just a wink. Rain smiled at her.